Today, at a temple on the side of a mountain, I felt compelled to walk through the falling snow across the frozen courtyard and give my gloves to a Buddhist monk. Have I had a spiritual experience? I have cold hands, I can tell you that much.” Suffice to say, it’s been another weird week.

“That moment when the mountains show themselves is a spiritual, close to religious revelation, so much so that you can almost ignore the dozen or so cameras that go off around your ears the instant it happens.”

Run with the Yak’s Fiona Wylie heads for the top of China’s movie star mountain.

“Sipping a beer beneath a giant red Lenin flag, flanked by an equally large poster of Jimi Hendrix and watching a six foot, topless Chinese transsexual doing stand-up comedy, it’s hard to escape the notion that Haerbin is an unusual place.”

Run with the Yak’s Fiona Wylie heads to Northern China to check out Haerbin’s famous Ice Festival.

Arriving at one of the most beautiful monasteries he has ever seen, Run with the Yak’s Martin Forster quickly discovers there is something not quite right about Kumbum. Contains video from our ‘Travels in China’ series.

Run with the Yak’s Martin Forster begins his ascent onto the Tibetan Plateau with a visit to one of the most important, but least visited monasteries in Tibetan buddhism. Little did we know, the rains that were begining to fall would soon sweep away thousands of homes across three provinces. Part of our ‘Travels in China’ series.

As our tiny bus racketed along the bottom of the gully, I watched the swrling brown waters of the swolen Yellow River lapping at the edge of the road. We’d already heard about landslides closing roads further up the plateau. The goat herder next to me seemed more interested in me than the rising waters. Then again, he’d never been down form the plateau before, why would this look out of the ordinary?